From: Marco Milazzo (mmilazz1@elp.rr.com)
Date: 09/22/02-09:22:41 AM Z
Judy,
Thanks for responding to my message with civility. I'll do the same. But
for the moment, let's skip over personal issues of my feelings and yours,
and just look at street photography, or really candid photography in
general. At bottom, I'm just asking a question. It may be a question that
was answered in "Criticism 101," but I didn't take that course, so maybe we
can discuss it for a short while here.
This is my premise: Sure life isn't fair -- that's a "given." But I think
we're supposed to try to make it as fair as possible. Having an
unflattering picture of you taken without your permission hanging on a
gallery wall may seem like small potatoes compared to some injustices
society can deal out, but it has potential for real abusiveness.
The real point is that freedom to photograph people without their permission
also implies freedom to distort their image, to catch them at their worst,
or to tack onto their picture, some title just a bit short of slander.
That's all perfectly legal.
(By the way, most of us got the "Arrington vs. the NY Times" case wrong. I
later learned that an appeal court decided that ending up on the cover of
the Times Magazine is the price we may have to pay for living in a society
with a free flow of information.)
Not all street photography is abusive. I see lots of street photography --
Cartier-Bresson's for instance -- which (pardon the corniness), seems like a
celebration of life. But some street photography seems designed to make
people look ugly, venial, ridiculous, etc. in one way or another.
As I sit here this Sunday morning, caffeine- and carbohydrate starved, my
brain is unable to come up with a resounding summation, so let me stop here,
and say that if any of this strikes a note in your symphony, please
respond -- I'm all ears. If not, well it was just an idea.
Marco
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : 10/01/02-03:47:10 PM Z CST